Here it is Christmas Eve, and I’ve hardly mentioned Christmas this year or wished you all Happy Holidays. I hope you all have wonderful plans with friends and family for the holidays. Our celebration is going to be quiet this year, getting together with neighbors, and being lazy like Mr. Snowman who doesn’t move a muscle while he guards the piano. He likes his job, though, or hides his feelings behind his broad smile. I’m not sure which. He’s not much of a conversationalist!
I want to thank you all of your for your comments yesterday. They were very helpful. I agreed with them, and have struggled with Chapter One from the beginning of the first writing of Chapter One, which is soooooo discouraging!
I read today that writers need to wear three hats as they write: the writer, the editor and the reader. The last one is the hardest to develop. The problem is that the writer already knows things that the reader isn’t privileged to know. Since I know so much about Vanessa, it’s been hard to weed out just what all I should share in the first chapter. Some of it I’m not sure I even want to tell you because it’s so private boring hard to put into words! Another problem I have is that Vanessa keeps morphing. Sometimes she is so fluid, that I can’t even keep track of who she is! I thought I knew her pretty well as Trixie, but as Vanessa, she’s not quite the same person. It’s like changing the person who played Darren in Bewitched in the middle of the series. He was sort of the same, but not really!
So what you all said to me made a lot of sense. Making sense of advice, and being able to fix it, though are two different skills! It’s interesting to me, that teaching and writing all most of my life hasn’t been nearly enough preparation to write a simple best-selling fiction novel. My husband says I’m expecting it to come to easily, and I guess I have to agree with him, although I don’t consider what I’ve done as “coming too easily.” It’s pretty humbling, really. But… I will keep plugging along.
Thanks again, enjoy the holidays, and God bless. 🙂
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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